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Wednesday, December 25, 2013

This year's Christmas letter is not really up to my usual standards but since it almost didn't get written, you all can take what you get. (Oh yeah, Merry Christmas too.) Here you go, in case you aren't already on the burgeoning card list:

Like death and taxes, the annual K. Christmas letter is inevitable. Hopefully reading about our misadventures is at least slightly more appealing than those other inevitabilities, though if not, this paper probably makes a good gerbil cage liner. You’re welcome. So, once more into the breach: the 2013 K. year in review.

January: Do I ever manage to remember what we’ve done in January or does it always get lost in the mists of time and my aging brain? Once again we’ll just assume that this was probably an uneventful, dull month. (And maybe next year I’ll make up something completely amazing—or, more likely, I’ll forget again.)

February: R. decided to be vegetarian for the month so W. requested bacon for breakfast on the 1st. And I made it for him. As you can see, we’re all about familial support here. In addition to taunting his usually carnivorous sister with meat all month, W. made the school tennis team again. The fact that their uniforms included collared shirts, a style he loathes, was a bit of karmic payback for his bacon baiting.

March: R. was thrilled to be signed up for driver’s ed over spring break. OK, not really. She was really annoyed to be getting up and heading to a classroom by 8 am on a week she shouldn’t have been in school. Strangely enough, our kids seem to have no desire to ever drive. Hope they don’t think I’m going to chauffeur them forever.

April: T. took up archery this month. He really loves it, especially when the instructors tack dollar bills to the target and announce that anyone hitting them can keep the money. He may not hit the bulls-eye often otherwise but when money is involved, he manages to send his arrows true every time. Also this month, I fell on the tennis court and split my head open. We’re happy to report that no brains leaked out but there were copious amounts of blood, which never came out of my shirt. So much for my laundry prowess (and my tennis prowess too, if we’re being honest).

May: T. got braces this month, giving us two orthodontic bills at once. The new metal in his mouth didn’t slow him down in the elementary school musical, Annie Jr., though. He volunteered to play every non-singing role available (he wanted a singing role too but family tone deafness made that an impossibility) and now he’s pretty sure he belongs on the stage, ideally in a starring role.

June: I was elected the Women’s National Book Club—Charlotte Chapter President this month. I did run unopposed and only after a bit of arm twisting so don’t be too impressed. As school wound up for the year, T. had the honor of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance for his 5th grade moving up ceremony. The reason, according to him? He’s loud. Well, we all have our gifts. R. had her dance Nationals in Myrtle Beach and the girls’ production number was named Best of the Beach National Champions. I still think that since we never did lay eyes on the beach while we were there that the title should actually be Best of the Auditorium but nobody asked me.

July: We (and for another summer, I’m once again not including D.) spent most of the month at the cottage relaxing and doing our usual swimming, sailing, tennis, reading, and sitting by the fire. W. played in the annual LCYC “Butzie” tennis tournament and he and his partner were runners up. I promptly stole the pretty engraved glass mug from him and it is living on one of my bookshelves now (fairly certain he’s forgotten about it by now too so he may never get it back).

August: We came home from the cottage early this year because I had to have a colonoscopy. Luckily I got the all clear and can now put it all behind me (egregious puns intended). Later this month, T. started middle school, officially ending our years in the elementary school and the illusion of being the parents of young children, as if a colonoscopy itself wasn’t representative enough of advancing age.

September: We barely saw D. at all this month as he traveled all over the state and the country for work. I just traveled all over the Charlotte area driving kids to tennis and dance and soccer. Unlike D., I at least got to sleep in my own bed at night.

October: I decided to make the most of my time at the DMV this month and took both W, to get his license and R. to get her permit on the same day. For anyone who is curious, even a two-fer at the DMV is painful. And of course, even more painfully, this now means we have to pay for a teenaged boy driver and we get to start the learning to drive process all over again with yet another kid. At least we can use the money we save on R.’s braces to pay for W.’s insurance since she got the braces off in time to have her permit picture taken with naked pearly whites. T. was back on stage again this month in the middle school’s version of Fiddler on the Roof Jr. Again, he didn’t have a singing part, thank heaven. He played a villager and a Russian and he did disturbingly well as a bigoted bully. I’ve been threatening to abandon the family forever now but I finally did it: I went to Chicago with a couple of friends for a weekend. While the kids didn’t seem to miss me much at all while I was gone, the dogs were very grateful I came back. (D. was grateful too, if only because that meant the dogs moved back over to my side of the bed to lean against me again.)

November: D. took a new job at Salesforce.com this month. One of the major benefits of the job is that he’ll be traveling a lot less, except for the fact that his first day on the job was in San Francisco, where we don’t live. With promises like this, politics might be his next career!

As 2013 comes to a close, we hope that all of you are surrounded by family, peace, love, and happiness now and throughout the coming year.

Amazon says this about the book: Sophie never meant to come back to India, yet when her new, diplomat husband is posted to New Delhi and she steps once again onto the country's burning soil, she realizes her return was inevitable. As her ill-fated marriage begins to unravel, it sets in motion a devastating chain of events that will bring Sophie face to face with a past she's tried so desperately to forget, and a future she must fight for.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Jane Austen and social media. How on earth could those two disparate topics come together in a novel? More importantly, how could they come together to be anything you'd want to read? But Karen Doornebos has managed to merge the two beautifully in this fun and modern homage to Austen, her enduring appeal, and the way we live our lives now in her charming new romantic fiction, Undressing Mr. Darcy.

Vanessa Roberts is a PR guru who owns her own boutique business. She is constantly connected to all social media, immersed in her phone and computer, posting and tweeting and maintaining an online presence for her clients. She is good at her job and she believes in the power of the internet, often citing how many relationships start online whenever she contemplates her online dating profile. The most important person in Vanessa's life is her Aunt Ella, who stepped in to raise her when she was 13. For her Austen-loving Janeite aunt, who is beginning to show signs of Alzheimer's, Vanessa agrees to represent Julian Chancellor, an Englishman who is raising funds to restore his ancestral home by promoting his book, My Year As Mr. Darcy. The sinfully gorgeous Julian has come to Chicago to do a Regency striptease (only down to his drawers) discussing historical clothing at the JASNA Annual General Meeting.

Julian stays in character at almost all times, challenging Vanessa on her dependence on the impersonal internet, even while it is one of the things that will most quickly raise him the money he needs for the extensive repairs to his historical home. Vanessa sends out teasing suggestive tweets, keeping Julian in the public eye during his stay in the states. But she, who has never paid much attention to anything Jane Austen related, seeing it almost as a rival for her aunt's affection rather than something worthy of interest, starts to succumb to the magic of Austen's Regency world. And she certainly succumbs to the magic of Julian.

The Chicago event happens to overlap with a Comic Con, being held in the same hotel convention center. So gowned and frock coated people mingle freely with Wonder Woman and Trekkies. And it is at this strange commingling of events that Vanessa meets Chase MacClane, dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow. Apparently she went to high school with Chase, not that she remembers, and he is the trusted assistant of her Aunt's boyfriend, making them almost family. As obsessed as Vanessa's becoming with her own Mr. Darcy, she cannot help but notice that Chase is good looking and kind and perfect in his own right.

Throughout the immersion in Jane Austen world, including more festivals and even a trip to a convention in Bath, England, Vanessa learns about love and relationship. Along the way she also makes a new friend in an ardent Janeite, she forgives an old friend, and she comes to understand the importance of very real personal connection rather than just a superficial cyber connection. This novel is fun and humorous, a gentle romance (with some steamy sex), even as it points out one of the perils of our very online driven modern lives. Vanessa is eventually seduced by the pull of real life and the beauty of the people who love and care for you in person, understanding that while her job is important, she sometimes needs to disconnect from the internet and revel in the real world. Doornebos has created appealing characters who need a little bit of the old fashioned in their lives. And although there cannot be a romance without some conflict, the interactions between Julian and Vanessa and Chase are interesting and revealing. While the ending itself feels a little rushed, it couldn't have finished any other way than it did. Janeites will thoroughly enjoy this modern delight of a novel but so will anyone who appreciates a sweet romance, anyone who finds it just a little bit overwhelming the way we live so completely on our computers and phones and tablets these days, and anyone who wants a little chuckle inducing innuendo in her reading.

For more information about Karen Doornebos and the book, check out her website, check out her blog or her Facebook page. Look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Kayleigh from Berkley/NAL for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Topsy by Michael Daly
Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
Billy Budd and Other Tales by Herman Melville
Let Him Go by Larry Watson
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
Boleto by Alyson Hagy
House of Miracles by Ulrica Hume
Paperboy by Tony Macaulay
Silver by Andrew Motion
Faking It by Cora Carmack
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons
Snapper by Brian Kimberling
Love Overdue by Pamela Morsi
The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd
Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Union Street Bakery by Mary Ellen Taylor
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Lady Mercy Danforthe Flirts with Scandal by Jayne Fresina
Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman by Minka Pradelski
Long Shot by Hanna Martine
Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt by Crickett Rumley
One Summer by Bill Bryson
Margot by Jillian Cantor
What Happens at Christmas by Victoria Alexander
Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman
Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke
Undressing Mr. Darcy by Karen Doornebos

Centered around a newly married young woman who disguise herself as a man and joins up to fight in the Civil War at her husband's side, this novel inspired by real women who fought as men sounds like it will be fascinating reading.

A novel about Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife Fanny? I do love reading novelizations about my favorite authors' lives and I have loved RLS since I dove head first into Treasure Island one summer when I was a child.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Some years I make dozens upon dozens of Christmas goodies. I leave out plates of cranberry and vanilla chip cookies, ginger snaps, Rolo cookies, white Christmas fudge, chocolate dipped pretzel rods, Figaro bars, toffee squares, brown sugar cookies, lemon bars, cinnamon spice cookies, and whatever other cookie has caught my attention that particular Christmas season. Some years I don’t have the time or the inclination to bake or assemble any of these and our house has a noticeable lack of baked goods for Christmas. But even in those years I just can’t add these delectable treats into my holiday preparations, there are two things I always still find the time for: Buckeyes and Tuscan Cheese Straws. The latter is a family tradition that probably predates me and the former was a serendipitous discovery close to a decade ago. And it’s just not Christmas without these.

For those unfamiliar with the ambrosia that are buckeyes, they are peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate, like a Reese’s peanut butter cup on steroid and for many years my mother made them every Christmas. She had stopped making the labor intensive goodies well before I left home though, perhaps thinking we’d never miss them. But some of my oldest holiday memories include the making of buckeyes. (Oddly enough I don’t remember eating them.) I remember sitting and watching my mother dip her already rolled buckeyes into chocolate and then carefully stick their toothpicks into a large block of Styrofoam so that the upside down buckeyes solidified into perfectly smooth balls. Once they had a chance to set in the refrigerator, she’d remove them from the Styrofoam and the toothpicks, carefully smoothing over the small hole where the toothpick has been. Her buckeyes were flawless. Mine are not. When I make them, I don’t worry about perfectly round balls. Once mine are dipped in their chocolate coating (for a real chef, this would be enrobing them, for me, it’s dunking), I blithely set them out on waxed paper, causing a flat bottom and occasionally chocolate that has spread like a small lake underneath them. And when they have had the time to harden in the fridge, I do not worry about the toothpick holes. Some of mine even have two holes where they slipped off the toothpick while being dipped and I have had to stab a new spot in order to get them out of their chocolate bath. So even my best attempts look a bit mangled. This year I overheated the first batch of chocolate so that first set of buckeyes is strangely textured rather than smooth. But even imperfect buckeyes taste like heaven. (I know because I eat the ugliest failures myself.)

As for the Tuscan cheese straws, they are a rosemary and parmesan cheese stick that I tried one year for my dad. My mother and grandmother have the sweet tooth gene and so the buckeyes go in their stockings but my dad has always been more a fan of the savory and so I needed something that would become as iconic in his stocking as the buckeyes are in my mom’s and grandmother’s. I no longer remember where I found the recipe for the cheese straws but they were a big hit and I usually make a double batch only to have half of it disappear before Christmas day is even over. My cheese straws aren’t pretty and symmetrical just like my buckeyes aren’t. And as an added bonus, my kitchen is usually covered in a coating of flour (as am I) when I finally finishing making them.

Because these treats are gifts, they happen every year no matter how stressed or short of time I am. And they are never shared. I do my share of nibbling as I make both of these treats but my kids went years before they ever tasted either of them. Normally my parents and my grandmother would share anything in the world with their grands and great-grands. But not buckeyes and cheese straws. And when the kids were old enough to notice, they would hover as I made both of the goodies, hoping that I’d give them a crumbling buckeye or a slightly darkened cheese straw. And from these imperfect tastes, they fell in love with these Christmas treats too. Last year they each savored the one buckeye and one cheese straw their grandparents grudgingly shared with them and even though they begged for more, they did not receive. So for the first time this year, all three of my children added buckeyes and cheese straws to their own lists. Quadruple batches of each of these means that no other baking was accomplished this year but I know a whole bunch of people who will be fat and happy on Christmas day, having received the only Christmas goodies they really care about. And as for me, I’ve already taste tested both sets and they’ve passed muster again this year.

Shape into 1 inch balls. Poke a toothpick into each ball. Cover and refrigerate an hour until firm.

Microwave chocolate chips and shortening for 1 1/2 minutes. Stir. If needed to completely melt, microwave at additional 15 second intervals. (I actually jury rig a double boiler so I don’t have to work as fast: fill a medium saucepan with water and bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer. Float a small saucepan in the medium saucepan and add chips and shortening to small saucepan. Stir to melt. Keep heat low to keep chocolate liquid and smooth. Turning the heat up to speed the process will result in the chocolate equivalent of curdling and you’ll have thick, lumpy chocolate that makes bumpy, uglier than usual buckeyes.)

Dip each ball into the liquid chocolate, coating 3/4 of the ball. Place on wax paper with the uncoated side of the paper up. Let stand until the chocolate hardens. Store in the fridge.

Add all ingredients into a bowl and blend until a firm dough forms. (Mine never seems to form a dough so I add enough water to get to a consistency I think they might be talking about.) Cover and refrigerate 45 minutes. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick on a floured board. Cut into strips 3 inches by 1/2 inch. Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool before serving.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Last year's novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, was a lovely read, capturing my imagination and that of everyone to whom I recommended it. In Perfect, Rachel Joyce's second novel, she revisits some familiar themes, forgiveness, redemption, and connection, although the novel itself is very different than Harold Fry.

This novel is a double stranded narrative that alternates between the summer of 1972 when Byron Hemmings is 11, his best friend James Lowe has a crush on Byron's lovely, delicate mother Diana, and Diana herself is carefully leading the perfect life and maintaining the appearances that her husband, who visits only on weekends, demands and the current day when a middle aged man named Jim, who suffers from mental illness and stuttering, has been released from a closing inpatient psychiatric care facility to try and make his way in the larger world. As the novel moves back and forth between the stories, the ways in which they are connected is not immediately obvious but they do eventually come together in a crescendo movement.

11 year old Byron is a thoughtful child just outside the cusp of any real understanding of the pressures of adult life. His best friend, James, who Byron admires greatly, is a detailed planner, coming up with plans of action that Byron is happy to follow. He tells Byron that scientists are going to add two seconds to the year to adjust for the earth's movement. And while James finds this an interesting but rather forgettable fact, Byron is obsessed by the wrongness of such an action, trying to stay vigilant to see the addition of the seconds. On a foggy summer morning when Diana and the children are running late to school, Byron knows he sees the hands of his watch move to add the seconds just as he witnesses something, a terrible something, that no one else sees, something that alters his world and his perception of that world forever. When he finally reveals what he saw to his mother and to his friend James, he sets in motion a series of actions that build the summer of 1972 to an unavoidable climax.

Forty years on, Jim is just trying to live his daily life, indulging in the obsessive compulsive rituals he is driven to perform and holding down a job wiping tables in the supermarket café. He is isolated and unconnected from his co-workers and he has no friends or family. He is completely adrift and living on the edge in a broken down camper van. He is uncertain of how to interact with others, having been in and out of care since he was sixteen years old, having endured many rounds of electroshock therapy, and finding the world a scary and occasionally hostile place. But when he is accidentally hit by a car driven by a former co-worker, amazingly enough, he starts to connect to others and to learn that intervening on behalf of others is not always the wrong thing to do; sometimes it is the right thing, no matter the outcome.

There is a noticeable rising tension and menace as the story progresses through Byron's summer and a pitiable sadness in Jim's story. Although it looks from the outside as if the Hemmings' life is perfect and enviable, it is in actual fact fragile and easily shattered and Byron scrambles all summer trying to repair the broken pieces, even as things come apart faster and faster through the course of his and James' determined plan to save Diana from the snowballing repercussions of her unnoticed action that misty morning. The adult Jim, on the other hand, is clearly broken, far from perfect, a casualty of a past he can't and won't discuss. Both stories move towards their resolutions and knit together, finally revealing what the reader has begun to suspect and playing with perception and what we see on the surface as versus what lies beneath in the very soul of people.

The writing here is well done and powerful. Initially the great difference between the two story lines makes the novel read as two unconnected tales, making it a little hard to settle into the book but in the end it is clear why Joyce has chosen to write it this way, to maintain the mystery as long as possible. Byron's narration of the 1972 portion of the novel is spot on, allowing the reader to see the significance of the things he is missing while maintaining the desperate naïvete of a child trying to assume the role of an adult. Jim is mostly a sympathetic character but the necessary withholding of his past lessens this a bit. Throughout both portions of the novel there is a feeling of overwhelming sadness at perceived, pervasive failure and the inability to maintain perfection but in the end there is a flicker of hope that the striving is good enough and that connection, even imperfect connection, can repair the breaks.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Dogs are amazing animals. They give us so much, enriching our lives in ways we can't begin to quantify. All that they ask of us is a little attention, food, and hopefully some love and they will walk by our sides for the whole of their lives, loving us unconditionally and protecting us fiercely. Janice Gary's dog Barney did exactly that for her and she's chronicled the way in which the two of them rescued each other in Short Leash: A Memoir of Dog Walking and Deliverance.

When Janice finds the Lab Rottweiler mix puppy in a parking lot, she has no idea of the importance he'll take on in her life. She is a fearful, damaged person who has never completely healed after a brutal attack she endured as a young woman. She was afraid to walk alone, imagining danger around every curve, wary of unknown people and unable to trust her own intuition about the safety of unfamiliar situations. Barney accompanied her all over, picking up on her panic and fear, being always vigilant and ready to protect her against any and all threats. That he had been attacked by another, bigger dog as a puppy just fueled his dog aggressive behavior. And so these two damaged souls venture out on walks together, keeping each other in check and always alert to the possibility of menace. Janice chooses to walk Barney in empty areas where they won't encounter other dogs or people. In the course of their walks, through all seasons and weather conditions in a wooded park near her home, Janice ruminates on what drives her and she slowly pushes herself to not only recognize the fear she has carried for so long but also to find ways to get past it. She watches Barney's pure enjoyment in nature and she starts to take pleasure in her surroundings and to live in the beauty of the moment even as they must sometimes face their biggest fears (other dogs and people) on their solitary walks.

Alternating between her present, walking in the woods with an aging Barney, and flashbacks grounding her fears in the context of her past, the narrative is lyrical and organic feeling. She writes of her development as a writer and the stumbling blocks she faces in that part of her life (some of which she creates herself). She revels in Barney and her love for him, relying on him as they tramp through the woods. And she muses on her fear of losing this dog who has helped her to grow so much, seeing him slow down, holding her breath through his health crises, wondering how she'll ever let him go and yet knowing she must. The writing here is beautiful and contemplative and spilling over with emotion. The title is clearly a metaphor for Gary's life, the way in she has lived so closely, afraid to venture out beyond her small comfortable radius. But in the end she has spooled that leash out, first taking tentative steps and then more confident strides as she pursues her dream of writing, as she walks down darker paths in the woods, as she lets go of the unhealthy, constraining fear that has had her so tightly leashed for so long, and as she faces life without Barney to protect her. Those who enjoy reading about nature and dogs and the struggle of writing will definitely appreciate the poetic imagery and shimmering language here. We should all be so lucky as to have had long, thoughtful walks with a Barney in our lives.

Amazon says this about the book: When Eve Petworth writes to Jackson Cooper to praise a scene in one of his books, they discover a mutual love of cookery and food. Their friendship blossoms against the backdrop of Jackson's colorful, but ultimately unsatisfying, love life and Eve's tense relationship with her soon-to-be married daughter. As each of them offers, from behind the veils of semi-anonymity and distance, wise and increasingly affectionate counsel to the other, they both begin to confront their problems and plan a celebratory meeting in Paris--a meeting that Eve fears can never happen.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The sixth book in Cathy Woodman's delightful Talyton St. George series, Country Loving is the story of Stevie, short for Stephanie, Dunsford, a successful accountant in London who receives a call that her father is about to lose his herd of cows, be prosecuted for the pitiful condition of his once prized animals, and most likely lose the farm that Stevie has always held tightly to her heart. Her contentious relationship with her father and the fact that he always valued her brother over her drove Stevie away even when her mother was alive but after her mother's death, Stevie hasn't really maintained contact with her father so she's completely blindsided by the fact that he's recovering from a stroke and has left the working of the farm to Cecil, a farm hand getting quite advanced in age and just not capable of keeping things going single-handedly. So Stevie and her citified boyfriend Nick make the trip down from London to check things out. Things are much worse than Stevie imagined and she decides that she'll have to stay and try to turn the farm around and come up with a way to make it turn a profit once more.

And so Stevie turns her back on her carefully constructed life in London and boyfriend Nick who is still patiently waiting for an answer to his proposal and mucks in on the farm. She butts heads with the summer locum vet, Leo, who is appalled at the state of the dairy herd but she is given some leeway by the Animal Welfare officer who gives her the chance to make necessary changes in order to spare her dad the indignity of arrest and the loss of his beloved cows. As Stevie struggles to right everything on the farm from caring for the animals to making needed repairs, she also has to work on her imperfect and fraught relationship with her father. In understanding where her heart actually lies, in the country, not the city, she breaks off with Nick. And as she immerses herself in the hard physical work of tending a dairy herd and the financial worry of how to make the farm profitable, she starts a tentative relationship with Leo, the temporary vet, despite their rough beginning. Knowing that he'll be moving on doesn't keep Stevie from committing her heart though and when she makes a discovery that could hasten the end of their relationship, she is devastated.

Characters from previous Talyton St. George books weave their way through the narrative of this one, allowing series readers to revisit some old favorites and see how their lives are progressing now. But even as a book well into the series, this stands alone just fine. As a character Stevie can be very frustrating and not very self-aware. Her relationship with Leo comes across as a bit immature, with neither one of them willing to forge the lasting commitment that successful adult relationships require. Each of them seems so transient in their own lives that it's almost hard to believe that they can overcome their own natures to be together. The picture of life in rural Devon and a small market town, the realities of farming and its hardships, and family tensions are realistically drawn here. And although I liked The Sweetest Thing and its love story better than this one, it was still lovely to spend time in Talyton St. George breathing in the country air, especially once Stevie figured out her priorities.

The Sweetest Thing is indeed a sweet confection of a novel. One of former vet Cathy Woodman's Talyton St. George series set in lovely rural Devon, The Sweetest Thing is the story of Jennie Copeland, stay at home married mother of three who is gobsmacked when her philandering husband tells her he has fallen in love with his latest mistress and he wants a divorce. Choosing to start over completely, Jennie finds an old and charming home in Talyton St. George, several hours from London and determines to open a cake making business, a dream she's long deferred. But she's not the only one moving or facing life changes. Her three children, especially her teenaged son, have trouble adjusting to the new place and Guy Barnes, the initially gruff farmer next door who sold Jennie his mother's old house, is having trouble accepting new neighbors in his childhood home. Like Jennie, Guy has been crushed in love and the two are quite wary of each other to start.

As Jennie and her children settle into the newly renamed Jennie's Folly, she tries very hard to help her children find happiness in this new town. She doesn't love animals but she seems to be acquiring a quite menagerie at the kids' request: a dog, an obstreperous pony, and a flock of hens. Since she is very definitely a city girl, she has to turn to neighbor Guy for help with the critters and the inevitable problems that come with owning furred and feathered creatures. She also has to try to make her way through the complex and set social structure of the town, never dreaming that opening a cake business would be so hard or such slow going. But she bakes to relieve stress and as a newly divorced woman trying to make it through the guilt, the recriminations, and the hatefulness that come with divorce, she bakes a lot, creating some fantastic sounding cakes. And despite her initial impression of Guy, as she gets to know him over the course of her first year, she realizes that he might be the stereotype of a taciturn farmer but he's also a warm and loving person she can always count on.

Jennie and her children's transition to country living after a lifetime of living in London isn't smooth and her three definitely have some resentment about the divorce that tore them out of their comfortable life. And they do play up and manipulate her, making this story of moving, starting over, and maybe even finding love, all that much more realistic. Jennie herself is delightfully bumbling in many ways, not having understood the magnitude of the difference between living in a small market town and London. Her relationship with Guy is slow and interrupted by the realities of life. They face disagreements and misunderstandings and situations beyond their control. But in the end, the novel is just as promised, a sweet, rich cupcake of a love story sprinkled with children, critters, an enviable country life, and charming characters you can't help but root for.

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke
Quiet by Susan Cain
Short Leash by Janice Gary

Reviews posted this week:

not a one :-(

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Topsy by Michael Daly
Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
Billy Budd and Other Tales by Herman Melville
Let Him Go by Larry Watson
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
Boleto by Alyson Hagy
House of Miracles by Ulrica Hume
Paperboy by Tony Macaulay
Silver by Andrew Motion
Faking It by Cora Carmack
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons
Snapper by Brian Kimberling
Love Overdue by Pamela Morsi
The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd
Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Union Street Bakery by Mary Ellen Taylor
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Lady Mercy Danforthe Flirts with Scandal by Jayne Fresina
Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman by Minka Pradelski
Long Shot by Hanna Martine
Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt by Crickett Rumley
One Summer by Bill Bryson
Margot by Jillian Cantor
What Happens at Christmas by Victoria Alexander
Country Loving by Cathy Woodman
Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen
The Sweetest Thing by Cathy Woodman
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman

Have you ever wondered about subways? They seem like slightly scary places to me so I'm very curious to read this book about two brothers, two cities, and everything that came together to create the subway system we still use today.

The South is definitely a different sort of place and I am very curious to see how Mayes, who is well known for her memoirs of living in Tuscany, recounts her early life in Georgia.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

I went to the chiropractor the other day because I am contorted into a shape more likely to be associated with a pretzel than with a human being. He worked as many of the kinks out as he could (I can walk upright again, so that's a plus) but he told me that if I didn't change how I read, I would have this same problem recur over and over again. Seriously? A dad-gummed reading injury? Completely ridiculous, right? Well, he got me to thinking and so I paid attention to my position and posture when I read. What did I find? It's bad. It's really bad. I slouch down and crumple up and hunch over. Not the best or easiest thing on my poor abused spine. Since I am not going to change the amount I read or the frequency with which I do it, I guess I'll have to be more mindful of my posture or risk another cracking, crunching, bruising session. (Mind you, I do love my chiro; I just prefer to be on the maintenance plan rather than the have to fix a massive problem plan.)

That said, I didn't read much at all this week because it's December and that means serious busy-ness around here. I cooked all day one day for holiday Bunko. I've been trying to finish shopping for Christmas plus wrap and send to those family members we won't be seeing on the day. I did my usual volunteer stint at the library and played a little tennis. I had a board meeting for my Women's National Book Association chapter as well as a conference call for the chapter presidents with the same group. I added the usual ten trillion miles to the car getting kids to and from their normal activities plus a few holiday extras. I went to two holiday gatherings (and even managed to be the mostly good corporate wife at my husband's company party--a role I take on reluctantly and as infrequently as possible so it's good his new boss is like an older fraternity brother of his). I sorted and organized the gifts I have so far for the family we will see on the day itself and have drawn up a plan to finish my buying this week. I've done round one of the holiday goodies for Christmas stockings so today I can do round two and maybe even round three (lots of chilling in the fridge time on both the Buckeyes and the Tuscan cheese straws). I walked with friends and dogs, all of us needing time out of the house and in nature. And I chaperoned a teenage party here at the house (which meant I couldn't really read as one ear needed to be open at all times for strange silences and I had to casually wander through the party every now and again to remind them of my presence). As you can see, not much time for reading or reviewing in here.

But I did snatch small bits of time between the pages of some books and I got a glimpse of the love life of a single writer in NYC, spent time with gifted slaves saving to buy their freedom, and walked a dog with a memoirist healing from a long ago trauma. Where did you go in your busy week this week, reading or otherwise?

Amazon says this about the book: After three acclaimed novels—The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Absurdistan, and Super Sad True Love Story—Gary Shteyngart turns to memoir in a candid, witty, deeply poignant account of his life so far. Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own.

Born Igor Shteyngart in Leningrad during the twilight of the Soviet Union, the curious, diminutive, asthmatic boy grew up with a persistent sense of yearning—for food, for acceptance, for words—desires that would follow him into adulthood. At five, Igor decided to become a writer, and his grandmother paid him a slice of cheese for every page he produced. He wrote Lenin and His Magical Goose, his first novel.

Shteyngart’s loving but mismatched parents dreamed that he would become a lawyer or at least a “conscientious toiler” on Wall Street, something their distracted son was simply not cut out to do. Fusing English and Russian, his mother created the term Failurchka—Little Failure—which she applied to her son. With love. Mostly.

As a result, Shteyngart operated on a theory that he would fail at everything he tried. At being a writer, at being a boyfriend, and, most important, at being a worthwhile human being.

In the late 1970s, world events changed Igor’s life. Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev made a deal: exchange tankers of grain for the safe passage of Soviet Jews to America—a country Igor viewed as the enemy. Along the way, Igor became Gary so that he would suffer one or two fewer beatings from other kids. Coming to the United States from the Soviet Union was equivalent to stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in a pool of pure Technicolor.

Swinging between a Soviet home life and American aspirations, Shteyngart found himself living in two contradictory worlds, all the while wishing that he could find a real home in one. And somebody to love him. And somebody to lend him sixty-nine cents for a McDonald’s hamburger.

Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart’s prose. It is a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world.

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Topsy by Michael Daly
Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
Billy Budd and Other Tales by Herman Melville
Let Him Go by Larry Watson
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
Boleto by Alyson Hagy
House of Miracles by Ulrica Hume
Paperboy by Tony Macaulay
Silver by Andrew Motion
Faking It by Cora Carmack
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons
Snapper by Brian Kimberling
Love Overdue by Pamela Morsi
The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd
Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Union Street Bakery by Mary Ellen Taylor
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Lady Mercy Danforthe Flirts with Scandal by Jayne Fresina
Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman by Minka Pradelski
Long Shot by Hanna Martine
Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt by Crickett Rumley
One Summer by Bill Bryson
Margot by Jillian Cantor
What Happens at Christmas by Victoria Alexander
Country Loving by Cathy Woodman
Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen
The Sweetest Thing by Cathy Woodman

Sarah-Kate Lynch's other works are just charming so I can't wait to read this one about a Southern belle beekeeper who is afraid of relationships but runs smack into one when she moves to Manhattan.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Ever since the runaway success of 50 Shades of Grey, the (re)discovery of erotica has been foremost in the book world. People ask me all the time if I've read that book and what I might have thought of it. And they seem surprised that someone who reads incessantly wouldn't have read it. But when I try to explain that I have in fact read erotica before (and long prior to this new trend), then the consensus is that I would want to read something far more literary as if there is no such thing as literary erotica, no author like Anais Nin. Of course, there is, and there are authors like Nikki Gemmell, whose ten year old novel The Bride Stripped Bare is another example of literary erotica, a sexually charged book with a purposeful concept behind its erotic explorations. But perhaps my past experiences should have prepared me for the fact that even literary erotica misses the mark for me.

Opening with a note from the main character's mother offering the enclosed diary or set of lessons as a book to be published anonymously in the wake of the eponymous bride's unexplained disappearance, the note itself sets up the purpose of the narrative: a woman no longer content in the sexless and passionless existence of her marriage who opens herself up to find herself as a sexual being through an affair and anonymous encounters. As such, this purports to be an exploration of the secret interior life of all women, to show what women want from men, to examine their unstated sexual desires, and to serve as an awakening for all wives but also for all husbands. Told in short vignette-like chapters illustrating purported life lessons, the main character remains anonymous and addresses the reader in the second person as she tells her own story. In short, the bride of the title has recently married and on her delayed honeymoon with her new husband, Cole, discovers that he and her best friend Theo have some sort of relationship to which she has never been privy. She's convinced he's having an affair despite his fierce denials and a slow freeze sets into their marriage. But this freeze is simply the culmination of a long standing situation as it turns out that lust, consideration, and communication have been leaking out of their relationship since long before their mostly platonic marriage took place.

And so begins the unnamed bride's quest to discover for herself, outside of her withering marriage, what she wants sexually. She meets and embarks on an affair with the gorgeous, virginal Gabriel, setting herself up as his teacher in all things sensual, and striving to make their connection purely physical, entirely devoid of emotional attachments. As Gabriel learns to pleasure her, she learns just what pleasures her as well, taking this knowledge back to Cole and working to reinvigorate their marriage in the bedroom.

Despite what it may sound like, the book itself is actually not terribly titillating and as a reader, I was most bothered by the fact that without the bedrock principles of trust and honesty, our bride narrator still wants to save her emotionless marriage thinking that sex with strangers will do just that. Although the second person, direct address is meant to personalize the situation for the reader, making her feel as if the tale is revealing the reader's own secret life as well as the bride's, this conceit doesn't quite work unless you posit that all women secretly fantasize about infidelity and rough group sex. Oddly enough, as casual as the bride is about revealing her desires to her diary or in this manuscript and to those men she chooses to pleasure her, she is remarkably prude and silent about exploring her own sexuality with her husband. Both the main male characters, her husband and her lover, are incredibly one dimensional and her conflicts with her mother and former best friend never quite reach the sort of passion they should either, leaving the whole tone strangely flat. Definitely a curious read, in some ways this might be a liberating sort of story for some and Gemmell can certainly write well but there's no actual plot to hang this awakening and affair on and that's a problem when it also doesn't really stand for the revelation of all (most?) women's unspoken desires, as it purports to do.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Skilled slaves were often hired out as craftsmen and women. We know this because their masters and mistresses earned money from their talents. But what about those artistic talents that didn't earn money? What about a highly talented landscape painter and portraitist? Would her work, unsigned by her of course, be attributed wrongly to the not nearly so talented but definitely white mistress of the house who liked to dabble with paint? In Tara Conklin's novel, The House Girl, this question of authorship and art coupled with the themes of family and belonging twine throughout the complex dual narrative plot.

Lina Sparrow is a new lawyer. Raised by her charismatic artist father after her artist mother's death when she was small, she has worked hard to get where she is in life, juggling her own drive with taking care of her often times absent minded father. She is an up and coming star for her year at her very high powered law firm and she's just been asked to work on a slavery reparations class action lawsuit against the US government, provided she can find a suitable lead plaintiff to be the poster child for the suit. And this is the point where Lina's two lives, the controlled work life and the bohemian home life collide since she comes up with the idea for a lead plaintiff while at an exhibition with her father. She sees works by antebellum artist Lu Anne Bell who captured life on a southern plantation in her landscapes and portraits but it is the more and more generally accepted suggestion that Bell's best works were in actual fact painted by her house girl Josephine and claimed as Lu Anne's that is most interesting to Lina. And so she sets out to find out the truth about the paintings and if Josephine had any descendants who could possibly be the face of Lina's lawsuit.

While Lina's search for Josephine's fate and family goes on in the modern day, the novel also tracks Josephine's life in the pre-war years. She is an accomplished artist but her talent must be sublimated to her duties to her very ill mistress. The master of the plantation is a cruel and hard man, breaking not only his slaves but also his wife. Lina resolves to flee the Lynnhurst plantation right from the opening chapter of the novel although it takes her a long time to acquire the knowledge and the resolve to follow through with her desire to be free. Her tale of slavery is not unusual but that doesn't make the telling any easier.

The novel starts off exceedingly slowly and even though the reader knows that the parallel stories must converge, it took quite a while for Lina's search to line up with the goings on in Josephine's life, delaying the revelations that must come in the end. But eventually they did compliment each other better than in the beginning and worked to engage the reader. Josephine's life, although representative of so many slaves, was a fascinating one while Lina's life and work on the lawsuit was less interesting although her own search for the truth about her family as she searched for the truth about Josephine's possible descendants was an interesting parallel. The fact that Lina so easily finds what she is looking for though, where others have failed through the years, makes the ending to the novel unearned and although the trail of letters from both Dorothea and Caleb Harper concludes several plot threads quite tidily, both those instances were too deus ex machine and made for too easy and neat a conclusion. There are interesting themes in the novel, that of the personal and political connections to art, family and truth, the search for self, origins and provenance, and the complications of history to name just some and because of that the book is a good read if not a great one.

The publisher says this about the book: Alice Greenway’s new novel is a stunning successor to her Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning debut about two young sisters growing up in the shadow of the Vietnam War. Inspired by the career of her grandfather—noted ornithologist Jim Kennoway—The Bird Skinner is a wide-ranging story of lost love and rebirth, set on islands in Maine and the Solomons.

Jim Kennoway was once an esteemed member of the ornithology department at the Museum of Natural History in New York, collecting and skinning birds as specimens. Slowing down from a hard-lived life and a recent leg amputation, Jim retreats to an island in Maine: to drink, smoke, and to be left alone. As a young man he worked for Naval Intelligence during World War II in the Solomon Islands. While spying on Japanese shipping from behind enemy lines, Jim befriended Tosca, a young islander who worked with him as a scout. Now, thirty years later, Tosca has sent his daughter Cadillac to stay with Jim in the weeks before she begins premedical studies at Yale. She arrives to Jim’s consternation, yet she will capture his heart and the hearts of everyone she meets, irrevocably changing their lives.

Written in lush, lyrical prose—rich in island detail, redolent of Maine in summer and of the Pacific—The Bird Skinner is wise and wrenching, an unforgettable masterwork from an extraordinarily skillful novelist.

Monday, December 2, 2013

In the midst of a harried and chaotic life, I can only dream of quiet space alone, away from people, completely sunk in nature, with nothing but time unspooling before me. What bliss this seems to me! Sylvain Tesson found just exactly this, choosing his own hermitage, for six months and recorded his observations and thoughts in the journal that became this book, aptly subtitled Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga.

Tesson had promised himself that before he turned forty, he would live as a hermit. Having visited the remote Lake Baikal on the Siberian taiga before, it was the perfect place for him to pursue this goal of living silently, intentionally, and simply, far from other men. In February, armed with provisions to get him through the long cold and the brief blossoming of spring, Tesson arrived at his remote cabin. He took just the basics, books, vodka, and cigars as he embarked on his journey. He records his days in a journal, spending much of his time hiking, doing chores around the cabin, fishing to supplement his supplies, and reading. His spare existence in his simple cabin is actually a luxurious examination into his own soul, an homage to the magnitude and magnificence of nature, and a chance to muse philosophically untarnished by the needs, wants, and demands of others. Tesson writes beautifully, recording exquisitely detailed observations about the world around him. His most frequent and welcomed visitors are the titmice outside his window. But there are other occasional visitors to his self-chosen hermitage as well. On rare occasions, he kayaks and hikes to visit his neighbors or they come crashing loudly into his peaceful solitude to drink vodka and tell tales. As his time on the edge of the forest continues, he adopts two small puppies as companions, changing the tenor of his isolated life.

Some of Tesson's entries in his journal are brief and others longer meditations on a life both tiny and vast. Sitting at his window and watching the lake, he captures the mutability of the weather and of his own moods. He celebrates the peaceful calm of life in seclusion and concludes that hermits are not fighting against the world when they retreat, they are simple walking away from it. He reads philosophy, other accounts of solitary living, and some popular crime novels for an interlude between the heavier books. But mainly he observes the world around him as he goes about his days: the weather, the wildlife, the forest, and even the rocks catch his eye. Current events, personal and political, rarely intrude on his self-contained life on the taiga although the occasional visitor brings days old newspapers and he hears both of his sister's baby's birth and of his girlfriend's final goodbye on his mostly unused satellite phone. This is a very contemplative and slow book, mirroring Tesson's days. But in the reading of it, it asks you to take a brief respite from all the noise swirling around, to sink into its words, and to commune with that tiny piece of your own soul engaged by the loveliness of the writing and the thoughts between these covers.

For more information about Sylvain Tesson and the book, check out his Facebook page. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Emma from France Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Between Thanksgiving and our annual after Thanksgiving party, I spent a lot of time cooking and eating and not so very much time reading and reviewing. But now that I am pleasantly sated and shouldn't need to eat again until Christmas rolls around, I can dive back into my books! This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Margot by Jillian Cantor
The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson
The Bride Stripped Bare by Nikki Gemmell

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The House Girl by Tara Conklin
Topsy by Michael Daly
Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
Billy Budd and Other Tales by Herman Melville
Let Him Go by Larry Watson
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
Boleto by Alyson Hagy
House of Miracles by Ulrica Hume
Paperboy by Tony Macaulay
Silver by Andrew Motion
Faking It by Cora Carmack
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons
Snapper by Brian Kimberling
Love Overdue by Pamela Morsi
The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd
Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Union Street Bakery by Mary Ellen Taylor
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Lady Mercy Danforthe Flirts with Scandal by Jayne Fresina
Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman by Minka Pradelski
Long Shot by Hanna Martine
Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt by Crickett Rumley
One Summer by Bill Bryson
Margot by Jillian Cantor
The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson
The Bride Stripped Bare by Nikki Gemmell

Wiley Cash writes gorgeous and dark novels and I am definitely looking forward to this one about two little girls stolen by their desperate, wanted father after their mother's death.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

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About Me

A voracious reader, fledgling runner, and full time kiddie chauffeur.
If anyone out there wants to send me books for review (oh please don't fro me in that briar patch!), you can contact me at whitreidsmama (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you do write me there, put the blog name in the subject line or I'm liable to send the unread message to spam. My book review policy can be found here.